Overnight, or so it seems, space has become "red-hot," facilitating new financing and exit options for space entrepreneurs and investors. A frequent question is whether this change in market sentiment is a flash in the pan or the beginning of a new, sustainable era? If the former, investors and executives would be well-advised to hastily run for the exit while the gates are still open. If the latter, then the space, the final frontier, is at last open for business. Since its birth nearly 70 years ago, the space sector has depended almost entirely on government support, supplemented by limited corporate investment and practically no venture or private investment. This dynamic was upended in the 1990s, with numerous telecom and defense companies leading the charge to develop new rockets, broadband GEO satellites, and constellations of LEO satellites. The spectacular demise of this effort at the turn of the last century (epitomized by the bankruptcy of LEOs like Indium) vaporized enthusiasm for the space sector and sent investors packing for the hills. Nonetheless, new ideas and concepts (like LEO megaconstellations) were planted that would lay the seeds of today's space boom.
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